For some people, Jon Schmidt will always be that redheaded Highland High rugby player with the with quick smile and aw-shucks manners.
But none of those people were at Abravanel Hall on Saturday night.With the Jazz & Blues Festival in town and a dozen other activities to choose from, more than 2,000 people picked the Jon Schmidt piano concert.
Many were friends who have come to like and admire Schmidt as a gifted composer with a goofy sense of humor. But others were drawn by the music itself - a series of CDs that are usually shelved in the "New Age Piano" section.
But Schmidt has a quality that sets him apart from most New Age material. He has a rugged side. And he's gutsy.
Gutsy enough to open his show with a track right off his CD - in all its 12 track, pre-mix, error-free splendor - then come on stage and try to top it in person.
He's gutsy enough to play saloon-style piano the way men with big cigars and derby hats play it, and gutsy enough to switch into soft, lilting "confessional" piano tributes to those he loves.
From the opening solo numbers ("Riding West," with the piano stool turned sideways like horse; "Heart of a Child" and its hidden tip-of-the-hat to the song "Heart and Soul," the haunting and haunted "After Rain") it was obvious that - for Jon Schmidt - piano playing is a contact sport. He may be the only pianist in America who delivers a forearm shiver to middle C.
But then one of the pleasant things about catching a young performer on the rise is he doesn't have to play to expectations; he doesn't have a string of hits he has to wade through. He can wing it. And Jon Schmidt did wing it.
At one point he pretended to tune the piano with a monkey wrench, then flopped underneath the keyboard and played ragtime with his hands crossed. He brought up the lights and tossed miniballs into the crowd. He brought a young woman on stage so her boyfriend could propose to her. He played a duet with his wife and had his 2-year-old son trot out during a song dedicated to him.
Schmidt growled through some vocals, turned on some flashing lights and at one point turned his six-man band loose on a rock 'n' roll tune he wrote at age 16, doing a pretty good imitation of Jerry Lee Lewis in the process.
As an encore he did an Elvis tune and a back-flip off the piano bench.
Still, when all the energy and volume of the show have faded, what the audience will remember is the sweetness - Ann Stewart's impressive sunset slide show behind the song "A Day in the Sunset," the song that came as the answer to a prayer for a disabled boy, and the soft chords of the piece he wrote for his late sister.
As for Schmidt himself, just how far his piano-playing, prize-fighting style will take him depends on what he learns. Saturday's show had a rough-and-raw quality, which the pianist glossed with his natural warmth and honesty. But at the next level it's all show-biz. He'll have to learn when to get off a joke, when to cut the stage patter and how to fill dead time. He'll need to learn about ending songs. He could do all that, of course; he has the talent. The question will be if he wants it, if he feels it's worth the price.